Where a Scottish peer has no son, his peerage can be inherited by or descend through female heirs. Upon the death of Mary Hay, 14th Countess of Erroll, who died in 1758 without issue, Erroll's father James Boyd, son of William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock, a great-nephew of the Countess, became the 15th Earl of Erroll and took the name of Hay. He was a grandson of her sister Lady Margaret, who had died at Rome in 1723, having married James Livingston, 5th Earl of Linlithgow, 4th Earl of Callendar. The regrant of the peerage was questioned in the House of Lords in 1797. James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale, questioned the right of the 16th Earl of Erroll to vote at an election of the representative peers of Scotland. One of the objections he made was that the earldom of Erroll had been claimed through a nomination made by Gilbert Hay, 11th Earl of Erroll (died 1674), in favour of his kinsman Sir John Hay; at a time when in some circumstances Scottish peers could choose their successor; and it had been decided in 1748 in the case of the earldom of Stair that such a power of nomination could not be validly exercised after the Treaty of Union. The House of Lords, after a full inquiry, decided in favour of the 16th Earl of Erroll's right to the peerage. That he held the honours of the house of Erroll undoubtedly and without dispute, is clear from the decision of the House of Lords.[4]
Lord Erroll died on 14 June 1798 and was succeeded by his younger brother, William. His widow, the dowager Countess of Erroll, remarried to the Rt.-Hon. John Hookham Frere (a son of John Frere) on 12 September 1816, before her death in 1831.[2]
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